Later, I realized that the mission had to end in a let-down because the real barrier wasn't in the sky but in our knowledge and experience of supersonic flight.

If you want to grow old as a pilot, you've got to know when to push it, and when to back off.

After about 30 minutes I puked all over my airplane. I said to my self, "Man, you made a big mistake."

Rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own.

You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.

It wasn't that the X-1 would kill you, it was the systems in the X-1 that would kill you.

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.